Hopscotch takes a hands-on approach to teaching kids the basics of coding: They learn by creating their own game, interactive art project or animated story.
Who it’s for: Budding programmers ages 9 and up.
What we love: The app’s block-based visual programming language lowers the intimidation factor. Instead of pecking out line after line, kids simply drag and drop blocks of code (which are also written out in common language). By thinking about programming in this way, kids learn how modular coding can be – a concept they can apply to any coding language they may want to learn.
Don’t miss: When kids are ready to share what they’ve made, they can publish their projects to the app’s moderated community forum. Other Hopscotch users who come across something that inspires them can see the code used to make it – and learn a bit more in the process.
Meet the creator: Hopscotch cofounder and CEO Samantha John wasn’t interested in tech as a kid. “Computers were a boy thing,” she recalls. But in her last year of college, she took a class that explored coding through creating a massive photo mosaic. “It was so creative and so meaningful. I was like, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me that this was what programming was about?’”